Speakers
Ryan Blakeley
Ryan Blakeley is a PhD in Musicology student at the Eastman School of Music and holds a Master of Arts in Music from the University of Ottawa. His current research is on music streaming services and how access and abundance are reshaping the music industries and musical practices. He also studies genre in popular music, with a focus on musical fusions.
“The Music the Record Companies Don’t Want You to Hear”:
Rock in Opposition and the Culture Industry
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Ryan Blakeley
In their assessment of popular music, Frankfurt School critical theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer famously coined the term “culture industry” to describe how the commodification of culture leads to consumer passivity, aesthetic homogenization, and art’s political impotency. While they offer a pessimistic view on the political possibilities of popular music, many artists have sought to challenge music industry norms both aesthetically and ideologically. In this paper, I examine the output of Rock in Opposition (RIO), an organization from the late 1970s consisting of several experimental progressive rock bands from across Europe, to interrogate the complex relationship between experimental rock and the culture industry.
In a conscious effort to resist the hegemonic control of the music industry over popular music production and distribution, RIO bands took a “do-it-yourself” approach to music: they organized their own concerts, produced their own music, and distributed this music through the independent record label Recommended Records. RIO’s participants also critically reflected on their practices, with Henry Cow’s Chris Cutler in particular writing extensively on the organization’s methodologies and intentions. Ultimately, RIO bands sought to critique and subvert the music industry through their anti-commercial, experimental music as well as their independent production and distribution practices.
I argue that RIO meaningfully critiqued the music industry even while operating within its broader networks of commodification. To this end, I place RIO participants’ music, writings, and economic practices in dialogue with the writings of Adorno and his critics (e.g. Georgina Born, Keith Negus, Timothy Taylor). I also turn to the current state of the music industry to consider the implications of RIO’s independent model on contemporary experimental and progressive music practices. In doing so, I complicate Adorno’s reductive views on the political and subversive potential of commodified music while still acknowledging his insightful critiques of the culture industry.
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Keywords: critical theory, culture industry, experimental music, politics, Rock in Opposition
Steven Wilson’s Hand. Cannot. Erase. (2015): A Contemporary Extension of Progressive Rock
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​ Ryan Blakeley & Lori Burns
Video presentation
“The Music the Record Companies Don’t Want You to Hear”: Rock in Opposition and the Culture Industry
Steven Wilson’s Hand. Cannot. Erase. (2015): A Contemporary Extension of Progressive Rock
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Steven Wilson is acclaimed for his contributions to the genre of progressive rock, through his band Porcupine Tree and his solo Steven Wilson project, as well as through his collaborations with progressive rock artists (e.g., King Crimson and Jethro Tull). His body of work reveals not only an attachment to the musical and extra-musical values of progressive rock, but also a strong sense of experimentation and desire to extend the boundaries of the genre. Wilson asserts his resistance to genre categorization, challenging the prog listener-analyst with tributes to 70s prog values in some instances and surprising departures from genre conventions in others.
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While his music explores progressive forms, arrangements, and production strategies, his stories reveal a preoccupation – in keeping with the genre of progressive rock – with human experience. Declaring himself to being strongly committed to writing “conceptual rock music,” Wilson’s albums explore narrative concepts not only in music and text, but also through artwork and multimedia materials. The resulting works invite the spectator to interact with a collection of materials that offer dynamic perspectives on musical narrative and storytelling.
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This paper analyzes Wilson’s album Hand. Cannot. Erase. (2015) as the crystallization of his efforts to diversify and extend progressive rock expression. With this album, he explores a poignant narrative of human loss through a deluxe edition album book, representational artifacts, an internet blog, and several music videos. To convey this complex narrative in musical form, he employs a wide range of musical styles and genres. Wilson describes the album as a “65-minute musical continuum” that avoids alignment with a single, particular genre (Wilson 2015). His infusion of metal, pop, jazz, and electronic parameters into a larger context of progressive rock (or, as he would indicate, “conceptual rock”) calls upon the listener-analyst to grapple with a complex and multi-dimensional musical narrative.
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